Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Tuesday August 24, 2010 @11:17AM
from the speculation-and-innuendo dept.

jamie writes "According to the conservative political journalism site Daily Caller: '"It's standard operating procedure" to pay bloggers for favorable coverage, says one Republican campaign operative. A GOP blogger-for-hire estimates that "at least half the bloggers that are out there" on the Republican side "are getting remuneration in some way beyond ad sales." Or in some cases, it's the ads themselves: ads at ten times the going rate are one of the ways conservative bloggers apparently get paid by the politicians they write about. In usual he-said she-said fashion, Daily Caller finds a couple of obscure liberal bloggers to mention too, but they fully disclosed payment and one of them even shut down his blog while doing consulting work, unlike Robert Stacy McCain and Dan Riehl."

Protip: It is near impossible to change people's political ideologies, and it is completely impossible to change the ideology of people when you insult them.

But I don't want to step over your point, which is accurate. The conservative's main voter base (blue-collar, working class, middle-americans) are the ones hurt the most by Republican policy. And yet they vote for the same policies time after time out of a belief that liberal politicians are immoral, or anti-jesus, or hate families or something.

While the moral basis undoubtedly contributes I wouldn't underestimate the impact of fiscal policy. There's a reason why Republicans lose when they start spending money irresponsibly and a reason why they get a swing in their direction when they start campaigning about reigning in spending and try to paint the other party as big government. Blue collar middle class people understand working with limited resources so controlling spending rings true to them.

In addition, because they don't have a lot they tend to be more conservative minded as in, they don't want to take big risks. Big risks sound good when you can afford the loss for a chance at huge gains, or when you've got nothing to lose, but when you're doing OK but a fuck up means you lose everything you want things to be stable and keep slowly grinding away to move up.

Fair enough, but it's amazing how short the memory of the population tends to be. The fact that a year of jawing about fiscal responsibility has somehow given the GOP the high ground after 8 years of them shoveling money down the drain is incredible. Doubly so when the party has not laid out any reasonable plan to actually reduce spending or raise revenues, and I find it amazing that there are so many people who take them seriously.

Well at the moment they're campaigning on fiscal policy while at the same time urging that the Bush top-bracket tax cuts be made permanent. Plus during the last election cycle they were running on eliminating the top tax bracket entirely - putting ME in the same tax bracket as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

I have a slightly different view...

The inequity of distribution of income and wealth is at the highest point since the 1920's. I say simply this: The "ordinary economy", the part where people buy and sell goods and services, is broken. There simply isn't enough money in the ordinary economy for it to work right. As a side effect, there's too much fluid money in the "investment economy", so when too many investors rush into some sector or another, they generate a bubble. After all, inflation is too much money chasing too few goods, and that can hold for "investment goods" as well as real goods. Plus when too much investment money goes into some commodity or other, (like crude oil) that investment money can drive the price up regardless of the consumption-drive supply and demand.

The economy will continue to be broken until more money moves into the ordinary economy.

It doesn't matter if American executives, wealthy, elite, etc deserve every cent they have, and more besides.It doesn't matter if I'm "supposed" to surrender my middle-class status, take a 2/3 (or more) pay cut, and live on an Indian or South American style salary.It doesn't matter if the minimum wage should go away, the those people live on far less.

The reality is that:American executives, wealthy, elite, etc spend very little compared to their wealth and income.I don't trust the long-term prospects of my job, so while I'm still comfortable, I'm not about to take out a loan for a big-ticket item.When you have to decide between food and clothing, or shelter and medical care, you do only what you have to, and what you can.None of this drives economic recovery.

If the American executives, wealthy, elite, etc had a little less, it would make no difference to their lives. Their egos would take a slight bruising in their investment portfolios.If I had more long-term confidence in my job, I'd finance a car. My 12 year old Ford is a little long-in-the-tooth, and getting to be unreliable.If someone deciding between food and clothing had more money, he'd buy both.

This isn't principle, it's pragmatism. Notice that I haven't really said anything about who deserves what, though there is a tone to what I've written. It's just a simple matter of what it takes to make the economy work. Until money "moves down" the economy will continue to be in the doldrums. But unfortunately there's no acceptable way to "move money down", because that's "wealth transfer" and thereby evil. Of course when wealth transfers up, as has happened faster since 1980, that's "natural" and "good". But we've transferred so much money up, that those below haven't got enough to make the economy work, any more.

The other side of this is that Obama did nothing to fix this problem. None of what he did did a thing to affect the distribution of wealth and income in the country. Perhaps running the printing press for the stimulus and bailouts has "created" extra cash, though all things told, I'm not sure that more of that money really went "down" with the stimulus than went "up" with the bailouts.

Nor am I entirely against supply-side solutions - they have their place. It's just that supply-side solutions aren't universally applicable, and this is one place where they're not. I'll moderate that a bit, and say that I'm in favor of incentives for small businesses, even at this point.

While the moral basis undoubtedly contributes I wouldn't underestimate the impact of fiscal policy. There's a reason why Republicans lose when they start spending money irresponsibly...

Yes, Reagan got crushed in '84 after all that irresponsible defence spending that ballooned the size of the government like never before. And then, after the Star Wars debacle, his planned successor in Bush Sr. was again crushed at the polls in '88. And even then they didn't learn their lessons, with Bush Jr. starting an unnecessary war in Iraq that cost billions. Naturally he was promptly heaved from office in 2004 as one would expect.

The conservative's main voter base (blue-collar, working class, middle Americans) are the ones hurt the most by Republican policy.

That combines a couple of mis-perceptions of the Republican Party base.

First off, most conservative politicians do a good job of protecting agricultural subsidies, which appear at least like they benefit farmers. They also do an excellent job of protecting military pork based in their districts. There are a lot of blue-collar middle Americans who's jobs depend on their conservative representatives. If your town's economy depends on building missiles to be used in Iraq, someone like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul threatens your livelihood. So at least by all appearances, folks like Bob Dole did look out for rural blue-collar interests. (That they robbed everyone else in order to do it, and otherwise ruined the economy, is besides the point.)

Secondly, blue-collar rural folks aren't as much the Republican Party base as Republicans like to project. The real base has historically been suburban upper-middle-class white men. For instance, the key group of Reagan's rise to power wasn't rural folks at all, but Orange County California. What the Republicans have been able to do historically in rural areas much more effectively than other areas is put out the idea in rural communities that urban people are their enemies and that any public spending programs benefit urban people at the cost of rural people. (In fact, the exact opposite is true.)

The GOP's real base are rich people who want to stay rich and don't care who they fuck over to do it.

So they manipulate the stupid, who in this country happen to be blue-collar white males who listen to country music and believe Jesus will usher them into Heaven, to vote for Conservative candidates, who proceed to pass laws that favor the rich people against everyone else, including the voters they conned.

The Democrats actually believe the things they run on, and since it's not so carefully constructed the

I vote for the Republicans on economic and social policies. I'm white collar earning a little under 50k, so I'd probably benefit according to your comment.

I just don't see how I'd benefit on an economic level though. Would I have more money? Maybe, but so would everybody else like me, which would only serve to drive up the prices of the things everybody in my economic class would buy (houses in my price range, inexpensive cars, food, clothes, paying for education expenses, etc.).

But I don't want to step over your point, which is accurate. The conservative's main voter base (blue-collar, working class, middle-americans) are the ones hurt the most by Republican policy. And yet they vote for the same policies time after time out of a belief that liberal politicians are immoral, or anti-jesus, or hate families or something.

A couple points in this charged and juicy statement...

1) Those blue-collar folks work for the rich white men the Republicans represent. They know, and know it damn good and well, that if you make the fat cat suffer, he takes it out on them. This doesn't impact those in the breadlines as much, but the working man feels it, and feels it hard. Given every viable opportunity, the owner's take home pay will never decrease, taxes be damned. He'll just pay himself more, or up his lease rates to his shell compa

The conservative's main voter base (blue-collar, working class, middle-americans) are the ones hurt the most by Republican policy. And yet they vote for the same policies time after time out of a belief that liberal politicians are immoral, or anti-jesus, or hate families or something

Supposing for a moment that I agree with you (I don't, but let's put that aside):

Perhaps the sort of people who vote for republicans beleive that republicans will try to enact policies which are inline with their own sense of w

First, why should it matter who exercises free speech? Why should there be limits on who can? Let alone why are some groups given exceptions from the law specifically in the bill? Simple, this about protecting those in power. Take any bill in Congress by its name and you know exactly that its purpose is to do the opposite.

I sometimes cringe when seeing what is moderated insightful on these boards, the bias of the site is so blatant at times it boggles the m

First, why should it matter who exercises free speech? Why should there be limits on who can?

The problem is not "who", but rather "what".

When the Republicans got a majority in the Supreme Court and the first thing these supposedly "originalists" do is overturn a century worth of precedent and come up with an entirely new definition of what a "person" is, creating an entirely new category of rights for corporations, the issue is not about "free speech" at all. It's about being able to purchase power, pure and simple. It's about commerce where the commercial product is political power.

There were corporations, even very big corporations, around at the time of the framing of our Constitution. It would have been very easy to establish the same rights for corporations in the first Amendment than those established for people. Yet it was not done and for good reason.

The Citizens United case was designed for the current election alone. Future courts will look on it like we look at Plessy v. Ferguson today: as an embarrassing decision, created by second rate ideological justices. Remember John Roberts' assertion that he would be just an "umpire, calling balls and strikes". Well Citizens United wasn't "calling balls and strikes" it was shortening the base path for the rich and powerful. It was juicing the ball only when Republicans were up to bat. Citizens United in one decision completed the transformation of the United States into a corporate fascism. It doesn't matter who's president, or who has congress any more, because 5 activist judges nullified the US Constitution.

When the Republicans got a majority in the Supreme Court and the first thing these supposedly "originalists" do is overturn a century worth of precedent and come up with an entirely new definition of what a "person" is, creating an entirely new category of rights for corporations

[...]

The Citizens United case was designed for the current election alone.

So we're speaking of the Citizens United v. FEC [wikipedia.org] case? Then I'll need to correct your gross error here. First, the case upheld the "century worth of precedent". McCain-Feingold was bad law and the abridgment of freedom of speech for groups of people was one of the reasons why. Second, why shouldn't a group of people have freedom of speech just like individuals? An individual could have done what Citizens United was brought into court for.

I don't know why this stupidity is so popular. Keep in mind that we had corporate personhood for more than a century (the earliest cases go back almost to the dawn of the Republic). It hasn't been a problem until someone needed to sell a book [amazon.com] on it.

Second, why shouldn't a group of people have freedom of speech just like individuals?

Groups of people do have rights. Each member of the group has rights, thus the group has those rights. The "group" should not have additional rights.

Further, maybe you don't know the definition of "corporation", but a "corporation" is not a "group of people". A corporation is a legal entity by which a business owner can trade personal liability for government oversight via regulation. That's it. A corporation is a fancier "DBA". Shareholders are not a "corporation". The CEO and board of directors is not a "corporation". The people who own or work for a corporation are not a "corporation". A corporation can not vote in an election. A corporation cannot run for office. Why do we pick and choose which rights the "corporation" gets and say, "they don't have those rights, but they should have the right to participate in elections financially"? Shortly after the first of the activist judges on the court, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito leave, Citizens United will be overturned. It is not just bad law, it's laughable law.

And McCain-Feingold may well have been as you say "bad law", but the issue of limiting corporate campaign spending was not part of the part that made it bad law. There is no question however, that Congress certainly has the power constitutionally to pass laws that regulate campaign financing. Otherwise, the personal limit would have fallen long ago. I'm not sure what part of McCain-Feingold you think is bad law, and I'm guessing that you wouldn't know if it hit you in the face because Hugh Hewitt never got that specific on the radio. Maybe you could hit Wikipedia and let us know which part of McCain-Feingold you deem to be "bad law"?

I will admit, that you're parroting smarter sources than the ones that are normally parroted by the "conservatives" around here but you're still wrong.

Oh and we have not had "corporate personhood" for more than a century. Show me where a corporation got married, or had a child, or ran for office or

First, why should it matter who exercises free speech? Why should there be limits on who can? Let alone why are some groups given exceptions from the law specifically in the bill?

Corporations are not people and have no need to exercise 'free speech', especially when they're expecting returns on their money spent after the elections.

Corporations trying to influence politics to their own end by spending part of their profits and then expecting returns after elections need not be protected by 'free speech' laws. The exceptions were put in place to appease Republicans so that they might vote for this bill. Something is better than nothing.

and there never will be with this attitude. The Democrats and Republicans have set up this defeatist attitude and revel every time it is expressed.

It really is simple, its called getting off your butt and putting in real time. Far too many people are satisfied thumping their chest here on message boards but damn, ask them to make a few calls, put out some Vote posters, and suddenly they don't have time.

In case you wondered, like I did, the GOP is apparently an acronym, Grand Old Party, ie the Republicans.
I know/. is US-centric, but, come on, give the rest of us a break and speak English! Thank GOD (not an acronym) for Google.

not because you are right leaning, but because you reject truth, you reject OBVIOUSLY NEUTRAL NEWS SOURCES in favor of OBVIOUSLY BIASED OPINION

show me a left leaning person who professes the same stupidity, and i will say the same thing about them!

because the problem, son, is not being conservative, or liberal

in fact, i would WELCOME an intellectually honest conversation with an honest open minded intelligent conservative, FOR ONCE

but they seem to all be dead. they seemed to have been taken over by the bleacher creatures, cretins like yourself who OPENLY and WITHOUT SHAME, as a mark of PRIDE (amazing!), trumpet the fact that they PREFER rumor, innuendo, and outright deceit... over neutral news sources

incredible. stunning. very sad for the country i love

intelligent conservativism is dead. long bleat the sheep: biased, and PROUD OF IT

incredible! i still cant' get over how proud you are of your self-professed ignorant

you actually believe your closed minded, walled off garden of bias, is a source of strength

i would WELCOME an intellectually honest conversation with an honest open minded intelligent conservative, FOR ONCE

but they seem to all be dead. they seemed to have been taken over by the bleacher creatures, cretins like yourself who OPENLY and WITHOUT SHAME, as a mark of PRIDE (amazing!), trumpet the fact that they PREFER rumor, innuendo, and outright deceit... over neutral news sources

That's true -- William Buckley, Irving Kristol, all gone.

The new round of "conservatives" -- Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glen Beck -- just make things up. They got end-of-life counseling taken out of the health care bill by calling it "death panels," for example. Really shameless.

It leads to the "Ace of Spades" blog, wherein there is an article that deconstructs this stupid Daily Caller story and also crosslinks to Dan Reihl's blog where he also responds to the Daily Caller story.

Uh. Right.

Dan Reihl's response is that he wasn't paid enough for it to be them paying him for his views. Accepting money from a source about which you give favorable reviews is unethical however you slice it. Just because you work within FEC rules doesn't mean that what you're doing is okay.

Then, the "Ace of Spades" blogger confirms that he was offered to publish a story for pay on multiple occasions.

All this makes Republican payola seem more and more like "standard operating procedure"

It leads to the "Ace of Spades" blog, wherein there is an article that deconstructs this stupid Daily Caller story and also crosslinks to Dan Reihl's blog where he also responds to the Daily Caller story.

It links to the "Ace of Spades" blog where you will find just how pissed off a blogger can get when absolutely nobody wants to pay him a nickel for his stupid blog and he learns that other people are getting paid. And if you want the skinny on Dan Reihl, I suggest going to sadlyno.com and search for "Dan Reihl". I defy anyone reading here to go read Reihl's blog and not come away thinking the guy is a drooling moron. Plus, you will find much enjoyment at "Sadly, No!", one of my favorite sites on the web.

Your link doesn't seem to refute the story, in fact it seems to strengthen it. From the link:

But yes; Corrupt. I did not write exactly what I wanted and yes this was due to the thought of money out there, somewhere, somewhere at the end of the rainbow.

You know when someone's easy to bribe? When you don't even have to give them money, you just have to put it in his head that maybe, one day, someday, there might be some money....

So that's my story. I never took any money for any story.

On the other hand, I did refrain from going full-throttle on Steele because, without being told I should keep quiet and act as if I were bought off, I did in fact keep (mostly) quiet and act if I were (kinda) bought off. No one said I should do that, but I took it upon myself to act the way I thought a Good Soldier who wanted to take the king's coin should.

This guy seems proud of the fact that the GOP was able to buy him for NOTHING. Just the thought of money was enough to buy him.

I was banned from Free Republic three times in three posts for the horrendous sin of refuting the talking point of the day with a link to reputable sources (Scientific American magazine, the Dept. of Treasury and something else that I forget). I learned after the first post not to use your regular email address to register, as you WILL be spammed with some serious hate mail.

Went back to look at Free Republic's web site a while back, and Lo! how the mighty have fallen. Whereas formerly there would be hu

I see your English comprehension isn't that good. I'll use small words:

Jon Stewart is not the person that claimed he funded terrorists. Fox News did. Jon merely pointed out that that the 'evil prince' was the second largest News Corp. shareholder and thus if he really was funding terrorists, then watching Fox News would fund terrorists.

Fox Claimed that because the mosque was funded by someone they referred to as an evil terrorist, that by association the mosque was a victory for terrorists.

Stewart pointed out, in what he said was a stupid and childish game, that Fox News is funded by the same person that they referred to as an evil terrorist, and that if you used the _SAME_ Logic fox news used to claim the mosque was funded by an evil terrorist, then Fox News is funded by an evil terrorist.

Fox, in essence, bashed themselves by claiming that they (Fox News) were funded by Evil Terrorist funders. BUT only if you applied the same logic that they used to describe the Mosque in question.

It is called Satire, seriously, The Daily Show used to come on after a program were puppets made crank phone calls.

I think many many many people on slashdot have this absurd notion that big corporations are always pro-free market and therefore conservative. This is 100% pure crap. Big corporations tend to be in bed with big government (both republicans and democrats) because big government pushes new rules and regulations on their business... rules and regulations that these same big corporations are WRITING. They do this because, although it imposes a cost on themselves, it imposes a far bigger cost on anyone who might want to compete with them in the future, thus stifling competition, and allowing the big corporation to do whatever they want (what choice does the public have when there is no competition, or the competition consists of 3 huge companies preventing anyone else from entering the market). I love when people talk about oil companies wanting to drill so much so they can increase profits. The truth is, their profits would be MAXIMIZED if all new drilling in the US was stopped. This is because they don't need to spend billions on extracting new oil, and their existing oil can be sold at far greater prices because of the laws of supply and demand (welcome back $4-$5/gallon gasoline).

The companies that are pro free market tend to be smaller companies that are unable to compete due to the laws and regulations laid out by the big guys. There are also exceptions for other large companies that rely on buying cheap goods in bulk from others etc, but those aren't the majority of companies. If you want to know which way the companies lean, just look at what candidates they support. When the democrats look like they'll be in power slightly more money goes to them and vice versa. They don't want to be screwed over when the leaders in washington change.

Do you even own a television? Have you watched any of these so-called liberal media outlets? They all supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, spoke about taxes on the top 5% of the income distribution as hurting public school teachers, and never pointed out that "death panels" and other bullshit lies about the health insurance reform were bullshit lies. They also seem to believe that Republicans just happened to develop all sorts of principled objections to middle-of-the-road policies around January of 2009.

I couldn't agree more the myth of the liberal media is just that - something the GOP has told so many times people think its true - there is nothing liberal about the MSM - cheers

It comes entirely down to whatever will drive ratings. Republicans have popular sentiment? Time to talk up the war! Time to talk up hurtful high taxes! Wait, Democrats are winning elections again? Oops! War was a bad idea! Rich people don't pay taxes! Come listen to us! We have something important to say!

As for how the liberal media myth got it's legs, what on earth could be an easier ratings-generator for right wing media than saying every other outlet is dangerously left wing?

"Pro-big-government and anti-individual liberty" describes the Republican party platform for the last 40 years. By the definition I always hear, there are almost no conservatives left in this country. All I see are corporatists, shameless corporatists and a smattering of outliers, most of whom will run from their principals in a split second if they deem it politically necessary.

The problem is, there isn't a good home for the remaining few conservatives.

It's not the libertarian party -- those guys are caught up in procedural issues like "should candidates be required to wear shirt and shoes at our convention, or is that the malignant hand of the authoritarian state?" And a 3rd party won't succeed in the US. It can change and election but not win one. (Ross Perot)

Where I work, our main receptionist is a 60yo republican. She doesn't make that much, and her husband has been a truck driver for years, so they can't make all that much money. Her car is at least 10 years old. For some crazy reason, she has "Joe the Plumber"-itus and seems to think she'd be better off with republican policies. Somehow the republicans have managed to convince people that increasing taxes on the rich (over $250,000/yr) and lowering everyone else's taxes is the wrong thing to do. I just

Most people use rich when they mean someone who has accumulated a lot of assets, US tax rates tend to tax heavily people without assets, but who earn a large income. Those who have few assets and low incomes have nothing to take, and those who have assets aren't taxed because there are many ways to use them to generate benefits without earning an income:
municipal bonds are an easy one
structuring payments to be capital gains rather than income--you need enough assets to start a company and enough personal capital to be taken seriously on your own.
use of a charitable foundation to provide access to power and a small wage to friends/progeny
There are others but those are easy to see and common ones.

Finally, incomes are highly correllated with high land value areas so costs of living are usually much higher (with most of the real benefit (economic profits) flowing to the well established land owners surrounding those high land value cities. Most of these land owners are high asset but low income folks again.

Finally, incomes are highly correllated with high land value areas so costs of living are usually much higher (with most of the real benefit (economic profits) flowing to the well established land owners surrounding those high land value cities. Most of these land owners are high asset but low income folks again.

Sure, but even after you adjust for cost of living, someone who makes $250k/year working in Manhattan still makes vastly more money a year (or has more disposable income, or however you would like to look at it) than most Americans, even if they're not living in mansions or anything.

I think at some point you have to still call that rich, or you're left with a definition of middle class that encompasses virtually everyone. I don't think that would be useful.

I'm sorry that the Republican party has left your ideals behind, and gone full Randian-crazy where money is a zero-sum game and those evil unwashed masses should be destroyed lest they get in the way of Galt-like supermen.

And people making $20k per year are a lot richer than these people [wordpress.com], who collectively spend about $1US per week on food.
So why aren't you suggesting that we ramp up the marginal rate on the $20k bracket as well?

If you ever bother to check, The Dems aren't proposing increasing taxes on the rich and lowering taxes on the poor, they're suggesting raising taxes on the rich and raising different taxes on the poor.

The raising/lowering taxes on the rich/poor is accurate if the total taxes required are equal. Unfortunately, we have a national debt that needs to be paid down and raising taxes are unavoidable. In that situation, raising taxes for everyone but the most destitute is unavoidable, but should be raised on a curve so as to minimize the pain as much as possible based on your ability to pay. I was just simplifying the concept.

Short version: The Old Guard thought they were losing the culture war (damn hippies!), so they ponied up cash, endowments, entitlements; set up think tanks and commissions in order to control spin that never really existed in the first place.

And here we are today, with the fruits of that labour being the shallow end of the Teabagger nonsense.

Ok, let's for the sake of argument say that there's a campaign going on between two candidates, John Davidson and David Johnson. An investigative reporter has discovered boatloads of evidence that John Davidson's campaign has committed massive fraud. He's done similar investigations of David Johnson's campaign and found nothing remotely similar.

Now, what's the best course of action for our intrepid gumshoe reporter and his editor?
A. Reporting on the facts known about John Davidson's campaign (with an appropriate amount of space given to Davidson's rebuttal),
B. not reporting on the fraud at all to avoid the appearance of bias against Davidson's campaign or bias in favor of Johnson's campaign, or
C. reporting on the fraud and implying that Johnson is quite possibly engaging in the same sort of thing, despite investigation showing that this is untrue?

The truth isn't always balanced or unbiased, and hiding a truth that may have a biased effect is introducing a lie of omission.

If the reported fraud is committed by a Democrat, the looniecrats will spread the story like mad. If it's committed by a Republican - at least here in Florida - it's business as usual and no one will notice or care.

No one would pay some hippy bloggers for friendly reports or statistical analysis on reader responses.

This is just another countless example of how the democrats want to confuse the populace on popular issues. Issue such as, should you vote for this republican or the other republican. There are also non-political issues as stake such as which is the better music genre.... country or western. (We have both kinds of music here)

A GOP blogger-for-hire estimates that 'at least half the bloggers that are out there' on the Republican side 'are getting remuneration in some way beyond ad sales.''

And the bullshit meter goes off the scale! Half of the intersection between the sets of "Bloggers" and "Republicans" are being paid for their postings? Yeah, sure they are.

Even if the GOP (or the Dems for that matter) are dumb enough to pay for that kind of coverage, who cares? Advertising has become much more subversive lately anyway, and often times you have to try pretty hard to figure out if what you're seeing is even an ad or not.

Daily Caller finds a couple of obscure liberal bloggers to mention too, but they fully disclosed payment and one of them even shut down his blog while doing consulting work

Ah, what kind and honest people all liberals must be, and especially their bloggers and politicians!

I've seen more instances of astroturfing for the Dems - here in Central GA, there have been several instances of people being paid to show up and hold signs at Dem rallies.
Which are usually pre-printed beforehand.
Tea Party signs seem to more often be handwritten.

The simplest method of cleaning house in DC would be for millions of enraged citizens to simply surround the capital with pitchforks, firearms and signs reading "GTFO Now!" and give every politician 24 hours to evacuate. This is direct popular action that routes around media spin machines, the punditocracy, political engineering, voter fraud, etc. The old, tried and true methods of political action are still the best, imo.

Oddly, I hear that same message on the news every election cycle (Particularly loudly when Democrats are in power).

Instead of just repeating slogans and talking points, why don't you take a look at the positions of each of the candidates who are available (and have a reasonable shot) and then make an informed decision.

if you have a business, do you just blindly hire someone til it seems right?

The summary suggests that pay for bloggers is more a conservative phenomena than a liberal one -- ie "at least half" conservative bloggers are paid as opposed to "a couple of obscure liberal bloggers". While this may or may not be true, this is not what a fair representation of what the article says. From the article:

"On the left, many of the once independent bloggers are now employed by, or receive money from, liberal organizations like Media Matters, the Center for American Progress and Campaign for America’s Future.

Some critics allege that the funding sources have distorted the once vibrant voice of the liberal blogosphere, discouraging dissent in favor of staying “on message” to help President Obama and Democrats in Congress pass their legislative agenda.

Indeed, many of the groups now employing liberal bloggers meet with White House aides for a weekly strategy session on Tuesday afternoons organized by the group Common Purpose. It was here that Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel famously told independent-minded liberals that they were being “fucking retarded” for straying from the party line."

More balance in the story summary would help everyone appreciate how the influence of money on independent media sources is a general problem, not a partisan one.

As I see it, the average reader should only care if the person writing the blog is writing things they don't believe in exchange for pay.

If someone self-identifies as a "Conservative Blogger" then I would expect that most of their readers are also conservative.

No one can force a person to read their blog. If what they have to say does not resonate with enough readers, the problem takes care of itself.

The whole idea of "exposing" these sorts of things smacks of avoiding the arena of ideas and reveals a lack of confidence in one's positions. Trying to paint conservative bloggers as paid henchmen is more about smear-tactics than trying to inform people.

This is just providing pre-justification for ignoring criticism and your own responsibility to back up your positions in the face of dissent.

The article is making the case that conservative bloggers aren't just paid by conservatives in general to blog about conservative things, but that further they're paid by specific candidates (in Republican primaries, for example) to blog in favor of that candidate and bash opposing candidates.

If correct, that's a little different than the situation you're describing.

Answer: "Does anyone NOT pay friendly bloggers? And if not, how stupid are they?"

How many of us regulars here can honestly say we've never encountered a paid shill right here on this little corner of the web? There are agents from Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and the US government. We encounter them all the time, and they're always easy to spot. If you think this is unique to this one website, you're insane.

So I say again, welcome to slashdot - or indeed the Internet - you must be new here...

It would be far easier to say, "Yes, and so do the Independents, and the Liberals, and the Democrats, and the Republicans, and the Socialists . . . " Get the point? Of course any group with an agenda to popularize is going to sponsor / pay a blogger to say friendly things.

It's no different than advertising - it's no different than a billboard or a web ad.

It's a fools mission to try and argue this or to even belabor it with any discussion. If you don't see that the liberal agenda is popularized by the liberal media, and likewise a conservative agenda, and so forth you are sadly mistaken. No matter how you slice it it comes down to a propaganda machine. The media and advertisers try to push and pull your opinions in any way they can to sway your decision. If they can cause even the slightest shift in your POV they have been successful. So don't be surprised by it.

"You're wrong. People who agree with me are enlightened beings. Everyone else is a brainwashed sap and the poor suckers can't even tell!" -- most people throughout history, no matter their point of view.

I believe that is the new name for the profession that I saw the other day in a jobs-and-careers magazine. Basically lots of companies are hiring people to "manage" what people say about them online. If that doesn't involve any funny business, I want a citizenship and passport from Disneyland, where we live.

Not blogging, but: how about bribing senators in actual legislation (e.g., healthcare bill)?

Referring to blogging itself, this is probably going to be a "biased" blog, I'm sure, but, hotair [hotair.com] has a piece on it. He doesn't mention "payola blogging" and Democrats specifically... but how about, ohhh... ACORN?

And to cap it off, this "news" lists a few "supposed examples" according to this guy [professorbainbridge.com], which does not even show any sort of rampant "GOP pays friendly bloggers!!!!!!!!11!!11" thing. Gasp, there are corrupt

has found no evidence the association or related organizations mishandled the $40 million in federal money they received in recent years.

That's a very specific exoneration; that is, mishandling of funds.

In no ACORN office did employees file any paperwork or do anything illegal on the duo's behalf.

Also extremely specific.

They refer to "edited" and "misleading"... and "deceptive" and "phony" - in that order - tapes. There is no citation for those claims, and the progression from edited->misleading->deceptive->phony is... interesting. They're claims about the tapes progressively get worse while no actual information is cited; i.e., they appear to be building their case on their own previously presumed fact.

And the piece ends with this:

One of the activists, James O'Keefe recently pleaded guilty to charges of entering federal property under false pretenses when he attempted to embarrass Senator Mary Landrieu because of her support for national health care legislation.

An unrelated ad-hom attack on the activist; "he was guilty later, so why should we trust him in this one?.

Lastly, your link is old. It's from June. The case is still going on, and there is much more recent news [google.com], such as a Federal court ruling against ACORN [nytimes.com] (your link mentions the decision that has now been overturned, a former ACORN worker pleading guilty of voter fraud [jsonline.com] ("Maria Miles, 37, of Milwaukee, admitted to submitting multiple voter registration applications for some people and to scheming with other Association of Community Organization for Reform workers to sign people up several times in an effort to meet the organization's voter registration quotas."), etc.

While that's a great theory and all, and I subscribe to it myself, have you seen the Democrat party lately? Those fuckers couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery, so I have a hard time believing they could have some sort of compensated blogger/journalist setup anywhere near as big or as effective as the GOP.

All political parties utilize bloggers and forum posters to spread positive messages about their agenda (or negative messages about their "opponents" agenda.)

Yes, but...

Basically, the article explains it as, on the liberal side, there are all kinds of foundations and think tanks and what not that hire/support liberal bloggers who of course write mostly liberal things, whereas on the conservative side, because there is not that same support network to pay for conservative bloggers in general, conservative bloggers are essentially paid by specific candidates. So, in other words, they're not as much being paid to blog about conservative things in general but in favor of a specific primary candidate who pays them.

If that's correct, it doesn't necessarily say that one model is more honest or better than the other, but they are a little different.

I understand where you're coming from, but I'm not so sure about the claim about the lack of conservative think tanks.

The Heritage Foundation [heritage.org] and The Cato Institute [cato.org] are widely known and have a fairly abundant amount of pull in the conservative community. Those two alone are MASSIVE, and capable of more than most people realize.

And IIRC they're usually on the "liberaltarian" side of that category as well. Not everybody who thinks it's nice to keep more control over your own money is a conservative.

Look at some of their Op-Eds from this month: "America, Home of the Free -- Except for Muslims?" and "Mosque Debate is a Red Herring", arguing against the current conservative assault on the First Amendment. "Government Needs to Divorce the Marriage Business", arguing for equal public treatment of homosexual and heterosexual unions. "

The difference is that liberal foundations and think tanks advocate in favor of specific policy outcomes, whereas candidates and political committees advocate in favor of specific electoral outcomes. Using the recent election and legislative battle over health insurance reform as examples, consider the roles of the different organizations.

The GOP tried their damnedest to prevent any reform legislation from passing, because that would allow them to paint Obama and congressional Democrats as failures.

Before the rise of the 24 hour news cycle, that wouldn't have even qualified as a story. You seriously can't even put that on the level of warrantless wiretapping.

A better analogy is comparing warrantless wiretapping that's going on now to warrantless wiretapping that was going on before, and there you DO have a story that's largely fallen out of the news and shouldn't.

Bloggers getting paid isn't a problem. Bloggers not disclosing they're being paid by an entity with a vested interest, or entities not disclosing that they're paying bloggers to write stories about them, that's the problem. And as noted, while the GOP could come up with bloggers being paid by the Democrats those bloggers did in fact disclose this fact on their blogs so their readers knew they were reading paid stories. Unlike the GOP bloggers, who didn't disclose they were being paid.